My Mister's K-drama ending explained: one handshake has kept fans arguing since 2018
My Mister ends with two people shaking hands in a coffee shop, and eight years later its fans still can't agree on what that handshake means.
The 16-episode drama aired on tvN from March 21 to May 17, 2018, written by Park Hae-young and directed by Kim Won-seok. Lee Sun-kyun plays Park Dong-hoon, a structural engineer in his 40s, and IU plays Lee Ji-an, a woman in her 20s buried in debt and caring for her deaf grandmother. The age gap between the two leads drew criticism before the show even aired, and the production revised its official character chart to head off misunderstandings about a romance. The finale drew a 7.35% nationwide rating, and in 2019 the series won best drama at the Baeksang Arts Awards. Lee Sun-kyun died in December 2023.
How the finale gets there
By the last episode, the people around Ji-an have closed ranks. Her grandmother dies, and the funeral fills up with the people who matter to her: Dong-hoon's brothers handle the cremation, and Dong-hoon's friend Sang-hun spends his own money on funeral wreaths.
Then the two of them separate:
- Ji-an leaves — she accepts a job in another city, where nobody knows her, and starts over.
- Dong-hoon leaves too — he quits his company and starts his own, and his team follows him.
- The goodbye — before she goes, they meet at their usual bar, and the parting ends in a hug.
Then the show jumps forward. In March, Ji-an transfers back to the head office in Seoul. She doesn't call him.
The last scene
They meet by accident, in a coffee shop crowded with her coworkers. Ji-an picks Dong-hoon's voice out of the noise before she sees him. For most of the series, she knew him through that voice, listening in on his phone, so the first thing she recognizes is the sound of him.
He tells her she looks great, tells her about his new company and asks her to drop by. She says she'll buy him a meal and call him soon. Then he asks to shake her hand. They shake, her coworkers call her away, and both of them watch the other go.
The farewell in the bar ended in a hug. The reunion, a year later, ends in a handshake.
The two readings
Fans have split along one line since the finale aired, and the show refuses to settle it:
- A beginning — the handshake is a door left open. Fans point out that by the end, he calls her simply "Ji-an," dropping the polite "-ssi." Some also track a run of hand moments through the last episode: Ji-an staring at his hand on the steering wheel, their fingers touching at the columbarium, and finally the handshake.
- An arrival — the handshake is the opposite of a romance. It's how two adults greet each other as equals, the moment Ji-an stops being someone Dong-hoon has to rescue.
The production's own behavior before broadcast leans toward the second. The finale leaves room for both.
Don't miss: Who is the spy in My Bias My Boss? The boss's first suspect was the fangirl herself
What the show says instead
The series closes on a voiceover, and it isn't about the handshake. It's about her name.
When they first meet, Ji-an explains it to Dong-hoon: 지안, written with characters that mean "to arrive" and "peace." For 16 episodes, her life is the opposite. The last line belongs to him.
"지안, 편안함에 이르렀나?" ("Ji-an, have you reached peace?")
Her answer is one word: "네." Yes.
Previously we wrote: Do they end up together in Extraordinary Attorney Woo? It takes a cat analogy from Jun-ho to settle it